Sunday, 31 July 2016

I went looking for Corbyn but found Christ and Coca-Cola: a report

The Blue Carpet
has seen better days. Thomas Heatherwick’s Blairite folly outside the Laing Art Gallery
in Newcastle still curls up wittily when it brushes the corners of the
buildings that surround it, but the blue chips which gave it sparkle have worn
away over the years. Increasing footfall to the gallery has eroded the artwork
outside it, as people step over the fading tiles to see Isabella and the Pot of Basil or John Martin’s Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Newcastle is a
city at war these days, a city of conflict between the incoming and the
established, the old and the new, the haves, have-nots and never-wills. War is
written into the fabric of the city, in the names of streets and tower blocks,
the plaques on buildings, the collective memory.

Ride through Sandgate, up and doon

There you'll see the gallants fighting for
the croon

And all the cull cuckolds in Sunderland
toon

With all the bonny blew caps cannot pull
them doon.

It’s all there,
even the use of ‘cuck’ as an insult.

I came to the
carpet to report on the war, but by the time I got here the troops had moved
on. Difficulties with the Metro ticket machines mean I am forced to entrain
without a ticket and disembark at Jesmond, the nearest station to the City
Centre where I stand a decent chance of getting out without having to
remonstrate with an angry revenue inspector. From there I have to walk to the
Carpet via the campus of Northumbria University and John Dobson Street. By the
time I arrive the carpet is empty. An old couple sits on one of the curving
branches used as ramps by skateboarders, but the Keep Corbyn rally I was
planning to get a look at has already decamped – to Leazes Park, I’ll find out
later, but my initial instinct is that they must have gathered at Monument, the
City’s main contested space.

At first I think I’m
on the right track. I pass by the new Central Library, the glass and steel
building that replaced the old Brutalist fortress, the black knight’s visor
lowering over Princess Square, with a structure which makes a fetish of openness, a
viewing platform with novelty Big Brother chairs, the stacks hidden away in a
white cube halfway up the building and the bookshelves tucked away at the back
of the ground floor. I can hear noise,
groups, chanting.

I pass the MakerSpace and bookshop on New Bridge Street, the
basement theatre where, almost a year ago, I asked my friends to throw rice and
fake blood at me while I stood on stage and talked of love. The noise is louder
now but it seems wrong. No megaphone, no samba bands, no sound system, no they say cut back we say fight back. The
voices seem different. And here’s why: this is not a political crowd but a
confessional one, a crowd of black people, probably from some evangelical
outreach initiative, hallelujah-ing
while stalls emblazoned with the red and white banner of Coca-Cola distribute
free samples. As far as I can tell the coke and Christianity are not officially
connected, but it sure looks like a land grab to me. I wonder if the ticketing
problems on the Metro were deliberate: not just to stop me, but to thin the
numbers of people coming in for the rally. But why? What’s the motive? Cui bono?

Try this for size:
the Metro is a German-owned company these days. Corbyn has said we need to
invoke Article 50 as soon as we can. Thinning his crowd is a bulwark against
continental financial catastrophe. Or this: the Metro recently had an
industrial dispute with its cleaning staff. Corbyn wants to stand up for the
workers. Thinning his crowd is industrial relations by other means. Or: Corbyn is Christ and the Devil Himself fucked the ticket machines up
out of spite. Or Corbyn’s the Devil-turned-Roundhead and in protest the Metro
will only accept payment today in tiny pictures of the Queen.

It’s ludicrous,
but we know conspiracies exist. The existence of the plot against Wilson was
once thought colourful fantasy. We moved on pretty damn fast from the general
threatening a coup if the current Labour leader was elected, but I’ve seen
bumper stickers emblazoned with Support
the Troops – we’ll need them to get Corbyn posted online. The Deep State
abides, shuffling personnel as needed, sweeping BoJo into office at the moment
the banks all collapse, a handy man for Diamond Bob to have inside the system.

The square around
Monument is overlooked by bastions of conspiracy. Here: HSBC, the bank that
broke bad, laundering Mexican drug money to bolster its liquidity. There: Pret
a Manger, the chain whose management impose a Maoist cult of good cheer on its
staff, surveilled by mystery shoppers, the secret policemen of consumerism,
lured in by the promise of free goods. (Full disclosure: I’m partial to
breakfasting on a Pret filled croissant, but I’ve never received one of the
free coffees the staff are empowered to give. Come on, guys, I compared your
management to Mao!)

And here, in what
used to be a bookshop, Byron burgers, the company which recently conspired with
the UK immigration authorities to deport 35 workers it had employed for years,
working 50-70 hour weeks. The company asked no questions and enjoyed its lowered
overheads, but turned grass to dodge fines and branch closures. Staff were
invited in for ‘training’ on the dangers of cooking rare burgers, only to find
out it was their goose that was cooked. A ‘quirky’ toy cow sits on a shelf
behind the counter; a sandwich board outside advertises ‘The B&A Burger’. They need to add ‘UK’ to that, I mutter.

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AJ McKenna is a spoken word artist, but hopes to provoke you to disagree with her about that. Her poetry film 'A Letter to a Minnesota Prison' (commissioned by Apples & Snakes and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation)was shown at the South Bank Centre in 2013. In 2015 she premiered her one-woman show 'Howl of the Bantee' at the PBH Free Fringe in Edinburgh. A former Deputy Editor at So So Gay magazine, she now writes for Vada and Clarissa Explains Fuck All.